HADEN RECALLS LESSONS OF CUBA VISIT

Cuba is a rare tour stopover for any American artist, but Charlie Haden’s appearance in Havana last month fulfilled a dream the eminent bassist had nurtured since composing and recording “Song for Che,” a tribute to Che Guevara, in 1969.

Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra performed two sold-out concerts at the Latino Jazz Plaza, a festival organized by jazz fans in Havana. The group was scheduled to play at last year’s event until Mother Nature intervened.

“ ‘Song for Che’ from the first Liberation Music Orchestra album was well known among musicians in Cuba, and that started the interest in getting me there,” Haden said in an interview in Santa Monica. “They saw I was in sympathy with what they were doing.

“About a week before we were supposed to leave, I got this call saying everything’s canceled. They had just re-evaluated the budget and didn’t have enough money because hurricanes had destroyed the sugar crop and they lost a lot of revenue. That’s the first time I lost a gig because of a bad harvest.”

That experience soured several members of the original lineup on making the trip this year, but Haden found replacements willing to perform for travel expenses, food and a small per diem. According to Haden, whose quartet performs Saturday at At My Place in Santa Monica, no restrictions were placed on the 12-member group’s movement during its five-day stay.

Saxophonist Ken McIntyre journeyed into the Cuban countryside to visit an 82-year-old uncle he had never met, and other musicians mingled freely on the streets and beaches of Havana. When not saddled with rehearsals, news conferences and business details, Haden visited a preschool, toured the EGREM recording studio and attended the Cuban equivalent of the Grammy Awards.

“I found real and genuine people with honest values, with dedication to the revolution and the realization that there’s a really difficult struggle to do what they want to do,” he said. “You see people helping other people. It reminded me of a family, communal effort where everybody lives and works together to build something great.”

Haden’s outspoken political stance makes his observations suspect in some quarters. “Ballad of the Fallen,” the Liberation Music Orchestra album released in 1983, featured folk songs favored by the political resistance in countries such as El Salvador and Chile. But Haden insisted he wasn’t viewing Cuban society through rose-colored glasses.

“My own curiosity was one of not being the devil’s advocate, but I was sincerely inquisitive about things that I had read,” he said. “Are there people without homes? Are there people who want to leave? Do some people make more money than others?

“We took our translator to dinner one night at this restaurant that was an Ernest Hemingway hangout, and we were shooting questions at him left and right.”

Haden was particularly impressed with Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and he hopes to inaugurate an exchange program of Cuban and American musicians. He cited the frequent European tours of Rubalcaba and the group Irakere to counterbalance the case of Paquito D’Rivera, the alto saxophonist who defected to the United States several years ago.

“I don’t know the facts behind it (D’Rivera’s defection), but I always feel a sense of disappointment when something like that happens. I’ve always had a commitment and dedication to making the place where I’m born and raised better,” said Missouri-born Haden. “That’s where my roots are, that’s where my soul is and that’s what I feel a part of.”

Haden’s “Quartet West” album is slated for release on PolyGram/Verve in May, and the third Liberation Music Orchestra album will be recorded later this year.

But even bigger news was Haden’s participation in a recent New York session reuniting the original Ornette Coleman quartet. An album featuring 11 new Coleman compositions is scheduled for June release on the Caravan of Dreams label, and Haden said the quartet, which also features trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Billy Higgins, will tour.